Deputies and officers tackle anti-protest training in Sunrise

SUNRISE — — Local law enforcement learned this week, just how to deal with a sleeping dragon. They use jackhammers.

About 40 Broward Sheriff's deputies and Sunrise Police officers trained for three days with the tools and techniques used to safely end hard-core demonstrations such as those seen at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999, which inspired this training.

"They called it a sleeping dragon," he said. "Somebody saw them laying in the street, about eight or nine demonstrators joined to these devices, and it looked like a dragon's tail."

To defeat this protester tactic, trainees at Markham Park's gun range Thursday worked with jackhammers, chain saws, angle grinders and other hardware to drill through the concrete cylinders ranging in size from five to 55 gallon drums. Then, they had to cut into the PVC pipes without injuring a protester's limb, Perez said.

"We teach the officers and the deputies how to safely defeat the layers, like peeling back the onion, getting to the core so they can defeat the pin [demonstrators are chained to] inside of this PVC pipe," he said. "[Protesters] can let go at any time but they refuse to."

Heavy hardware is not always necessary to persuade people to end their protest, BSO Detective Glenn Ritchie explained.

"We were deployed a couple of years ago during the Air and Sea Show for some demonstrators out in Fort Lauderdale at a car dealership," he said. "Actually, when they saw the lights and sirens and the big trucks and the tools getting ready to come out, they let go and said, 'We don't want to play.'"

The Sheriff's Field Force unit, informally known as the Cut Team, is not just for demonstrations, said veteran Cut Team Sgt. Jerry Wurms.

"We went to Tampa for the Republican National Convention and any time there's been any kind of hurricane we get deployed to assist other agencies with police work and humanitarian work," he said.

The FEMA-certified team was formed in 2002 after then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said local law enforcement agencies should be prepared for the kind of demonstrations that overwhelmed Seattle.

But one-upmanship requires constant training, Perez said.

"We come up with a technique to defeat [demonstrators' devices] and they come up with a new technique to one-up us," he said. "Then we have to learn that, look at the device and learn how we can safely defeat it."

The Field Force Cut Team trailer is loaded with generators and gear ready to mobilize at a moment's notice, said Wurms.

"Whenever this unit gets deployed, it doesn't matter what the mission is," he said. "We can handle whatever is facing us."